


red-handed

by kuro49



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-26 07:54:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13853352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro49/pseuds/kuro49
Summary: He fills his lungs up in smoke to force out what remains of before.Or, Dick Grayson doesn’t need to love him to care, he doesn’t even need to like him, which makes absolutely no sense to Jason Todd.





	red-handed

**Author's Note:**

> i p much incorporated word for word my favorite introspective bits of comic lines into this fic. i kinda wish i could make the both of them a little meaner.
> 
> this is really more pre-slash then slash but just to be sure given they share a brief kiss, the pairing is up there.

 

This is what Dick knows about him:

He loved cars and girls and getting into fights. Neapolitan ice cream and the color green. And most of all he loved the thrill of being Robin. (Or so Bruce says.)

The past tense drags resentment and bitterness to the surface like a rusty blunt edged knife digging in, one haphazard stab at a time. It tears through skin and flesh, it turns his guts, and carves sharp long lines into his bones like they have a score to settle. He comes out feeling like he is worn down to his nerves, exposed to scrutiny.

He could have, should have, would have been alive if— there are many ways to finish this sentence.

He is still all except one of those things.

 

He is fifteen. He is Robin. He is Jason Peter Todd.

There is a cut across the outside of his left thigh that has finally stopped bleeding and there is not a night out here on the rooftops of Gotham where he doesn’t stop wondering why the Robin that came before ever thought tiny green shorts like these were a good idea. He can see Crime Alley from where he is but he cannot see the manor even when he tries his hardest to crane his head in its direction.

Jason figures there is some significance to that observation if he is keen to dig but he is tired of reading into every little thing his brain can throw at him. He wants a peace of mind. It is late, it is dark but that is nothing new. He is swinging his legs over the ledge.

The first cigarette burns too short, he finishes it too quick. He stubs it out against the ground next to him and goes for another. Robin is meant to go home, Batman not due back at the cave for at least a couple more hours, so Jason makes a stop. The rooftop he chooses is at random, spontaneity plays out like a cautionary tale in Bruce’s handbook but Jason lived a life before Bruce. He uses it for its unpredictability.

When Nightwing finds him, he hears him before he actually sees him and when he does, Nightwing comes in black and a striking line of bright blue running from fingertips to fingertips. Dick is not used to being anyone else other than Robin while Jason has no clue as to who he is as Robin.

The cigarette butts sitting next to him counts to five, his time is almost up on this roof.

“You aren’t going to tell me to stop?”

Nightwing used to be Robin, Robin used to be nobody. That is the extent of their ties rooted to the base of a man in the shape of a bat. They don’t know what they are to each other is what makes this tough.

“It’s not my name getting dragged through mud.” Nightwing faces him and even though the lenses of his domino mask do not tell Jason whether he is really looking at him, he has a feeling he can’t be looking at anything else. “You’re Robin now.”

Maybe he really is just _that_ starved for approval. A simple statement like that even with this certain amount of weight to it makes him feel hollowed out, like someone has taken an ice cream scoop to his chest cavity just to fill it with a warm tight feeling that is twisting upon itself. It makes him smile in this pained little way. He doesn't hate it is what he wants to say.

He keeps his eyes on the sprawl of the city beneath their feet while he takes another steady drag. The nicotine fills his lungs, makes his chest expand. He makes a motion with his hand to beckon Nightwing over. He has no idea if Dick trusts him or if he thinks a brat like him is not worth having his guard up but Dick plays right into his hands.

Nightwing walks the short length of the ledge, leans down so they are leveled and waits.

He doesn’t wait long. Jason turns his head at the very last second, surges forward and presses his mouth over his.

In Dick’s surprise, he opens his mouth in an inhale as Jason breathes out. The flood of cigarette smoke fills his mouth, his throat, the spaces in his lungs. It makes Dick’s eyes water immediately behind his mask when the stink of the nicotine goes down all wrong. His face is pale, is pink, is red as he fights that choking sensation that rises from his diaphragm, it takes a long moment or two before the body-wracking hacks become muffled coughs and the red to his face reluctantly fades to pink.

Jason laughs the entire time, enough so that his shoulders are shaking and his mop of unruly hair with it.

“What was—”

Dick wants to be mad, so badly. Even with this lingering ache to his chest like someone has landed a very well placed punch, he is startled when he only finds himself thinking, that is a really good sound coming from this kid. He doesn’t finish his question, he finds no point in it.

Nightwing doesn’t tell Robin that he will be going off-world the next day, he doesn’t need to, he no longer reports back to the Bat. He doesn’t owe anyone anything and maybe he is childish for thinking that but he finds he is better off than before. They might only be brothers on paper but it doesn't mean they can't get to that point.

“Be good for B.”

“I’ll be better than just good.” Jason says, stubbing out the cigarette against the ground. There is a finality in his words that Dick always struggled with. He tells him, a matter of fact. “You'll see, I’ll be the best.”

Nightwing is not only looking, he is seeing, and one of these days, he is going to wish he remembers this night in detail he does not have. For the moment, he smiles, something wide and without a shred of misplaced resentment, the taste of smoke lingers and the nicotine clings, remaining for far longer than it has any right to.

“I don’t doubt that for a second.”

He hasn’t been Robin for quite some time but he doesn’t think that he has truly given the mantle up until now.

 

This is what Jason knows about him:

He loves it up high. Things seem less complicated when he is up high where it is not just cars and people that look smaller from this perspective. So do problems, and pain, and loss. Things shed some of their gravity. He is always trying to shed gravity.

Avoidance of this magnitude is an art form all on its own, and Dick has just about perfected it. He still keeps going like he has steady footing but he is making minor adjustments with each step the higher he goes, compensating for that hollow sensation of falling every time he steps out. The thrill is wiped clean, dropping out beneath him like a trapdoor. 

The world Nightwing comes back to is off its tilt.

He feels fear and so much anger. Dick repeats this in his head. He was fifteen, he was Robin, he was Jason Peter T—he is also dead.

 

He thinks he is nineteen, he could be eighteen or twenty, he is not really keeping count but he loses months at a time.

In the maddeningly green depths of the Lazarus pit, he is Robin. Robin is dead. He is submerged, he emerges. He is Red Hood, and Red Hood breathes easy even through the helmet. He forgoes it and in the naked remains of a simple domino mask, he drags in each breath like he is fighting for it. He is _alive_ even though Jason Peter Todd is dead.

The Red Hood comes to Gotham because it is the only path Jason knows. After everything with Bruce and Bats and the Joker who is still breathing the same wretched air he does, defeat is not quite the word he wants to use but Red Hood has licked his wounds for long enough. Maybe it is a coincidence, maybe it is a joke but when he catches sight of black and a long line of bright electric blue cutting across the dark of the skies, he doesn't go the other way.

Nightwing lands on the rooftop, his feet are light, his steps are silent, and he stops a good distance away. He is not wary, he is cautious, and Jason appreciates that he is finally posing a threat big enough to be viewed as an equal to the Bat's first boy wonder. There is a very loud part of him that wishes there are not just specks of blood splattered against his leather jacket. He wishes it would drip in red if just to make it worse on the vigilante who has made peace with a brother-not-brother buried but not dead.

Neither one of them are deluded to the parallels when he lights up a new one.

When Dick speaks, his voice carries. “You’re still doing that.”

Like this is the thing that is significant here.

“If this is what kills me then the world is a very kind place.” Jason tells him, tipping the end of his cigarette upwards like he is making a toast. He has his helmet tucked under one arm. He looks like he is just about to run even if each pick of his words is collected. “Meeting like this, it doesn’t bode well for me. Foreshadowing is no fun if it's real life, Dickie.”

They are both at the ledge, feeling on edge.

Here is a thing he intimately knows, even in death, you don’t escape being a Robin.

“Jay, you kissed me then.”

It is an accusation without the sting.

Rationally, Dick understands that he couldn't have changed a thing. But if Dick Grayson is a rational, well-adjusted human being, he wouldn't be remotely close to where he is now with the kind of legacy that he has to his name. After Jason's death, the thrill only comes back bit by bit with one reckless jump after another, one bad decision to add to a whole mountain of them.

Getting angry and venomous and downright vicious at Bruce helped too.

He might be able to outrun gravity for a short while but the fall always hits him the hardest.

“Still one of very few good decisions I made at fifteen.” Jason admits before making the corners of his mouth curl up, pulling back his lips to bare his teeth at Dick in a poor imitation of a smile.

“Do you like me?”

Jason takes a long, drawn out drag of the nicotine at that. He fills his lungs up in smoke to force out what remains of before. He thinks if he does this enough, he might know who came back one of these days. The street rat grows up into a dead man. The dead man comes crawling out from his grave. He comes back whole but he is put back all wrong. He has an origin story he has no heart to tell.

He cannot stand the sight of his favorite color, imagines it for the illuminating swirl of the pit, sees it for the froth and the bubbling and the scent of it pungent across his skin. It fills the inside of his mouth and nose and the passage of his throat to cling to his lungs and guts. It should be trivial to see the color for what it is, a leaf on a tree, a pedestrian's sweater, a splatter of lime jello dropped to the ground. Because what is he if he cannot even look at such a simple thing without being thrown back into the Lazarus pit like he is drowning all over again, dying and coming back together like a terrible creation of torn stitches and jigsaw pieces put together from different sets.

He doesn't feel like himself. He thinks he feels fifteen and also too big and still cannot manage to contain it all.

He stubs out the cigarette, glances down at the height they are at and thinks Dick doesn't have an entirely wrong philosophy to life. He asks like he cares and the truth is that, he does. Dick Grayson doesn’t need to love him to care, he doesn’t even need to like him, which makes absolutely no sense to Jason Todd. But he is not looking for the world to make sense.

He tells him the truth because he wants to rattle the last bit of remorse from Dick before he brings them down to where gravity can take hold of them both.

“You are not the biggest pain in my ass.”

He puts the helmet back on in one smooth motion, the cigarette butt falling from between his fingers as he jumps, his leather jacket fluttering open like a cape behind him. Nightwing reacts and follows, pushing off with ledge with an arch to his spine, a twist to his body that comes second nature.

Their lines go out, go taut. There is blue and red and brown and black against a dark backdrop of the Gotham city nightscape. Gravity always takes charge.

Catching them both in a death grip, they take that leap of faith.

 

 

 


End file.
